The emergence of electronic commerce, including online auction sites as well as fixed-price sites, has revolutionized the manner in which goods and services may be bought and sold. In particular, the development of network based commerce systems has enabled individuals to sell items with relatively little effort or expense while at the same time reaching a much larger potential pool of buyers than using more traditional means such as classified advertising and garage sales. In fact, an Internet enabled commerce site can extend well beyond geographical and cultural boundaries, potentially having a global reach. Consequently, one of the difficult challenges in developing a network based electronic commerce site is developing a site that allows sellers and buyers to communicate despite potential language barriers.
In a typical electronic commerce system, a seller posts an item for sale and describes the particular item in his or her native language. Unless a potential buyer can read and understand the seller's native language, the potential buyer will have no way of finding or understanding the seller's posting. Consequently, there is little if any chance that a potential buyer and a seller that have different native languages will ever enter into a transaction.